The Doctors Company Buys ProAssurance What This Means for You
By Steve Spencer
As everyone knows by now, The Doctors Company has entered an agreement to buy ProAssurance for $1.3 billion. ProAssurance stockholders will get $25 in cash for the stock. The transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2026. Upon completion, ProAssurance’s common stock will no longer be listed on the New York Stock Exchange, and ProAssurance will become a wholly owned subsidiary of The Doctors Company, creating a combined company with assets of approximately $12 billion.
ProAssurance got its start in the 1970s. At that time, the medical
Influx
malpractice market in Alabama was in disarray. Juries were giving out exceptionally large awards leading to a spike in malpractice insurance premiums, and it became hard for many physicians to get coverage. On top of that, insurers were settling cases, rather than fighting, regardless of the merit.
This moved Urologist Derrill Crowe, MD to start the Mutual Assurance Society of Alabama. “About 1973, the carrier that brokered almost 90 percent of the coverage for the doctors in Alabama decided to get out of the medical malpractice market,” Crowe said in the 2007 Annual Report. “We looked
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of Patients Leads Children’s South to Expand the Current Facility
By Lauren JoHnSon
Children’s of Alabama ears, nose and throat (ENT) program at Children’s South is seeing roughly 130 patients a day, which has led to the need for expansion. In November 2024, the facility added another audio booth and 10 new examination rooms for patients, bringing the total to five audio booths and 22 rooms.
“Basically, we can run an entire separate physician clinic at the same time now in the same space. That’s almost double the amount of patients that we can see on a daily basis,” said Philp Rosen, MD, a pediatric otolaryngologist
at Children’s South. Rosen specializes in hearing loss, chronic ear disease, complex pediatric airway disease and sinus disease.
The new audio booth and new exam rooms have helped the clinic continue to see patients at a steady pace and prevent longer waiting times.
“The addition of the audio booth is very helpful because that allows us to perform more hearing tests, which we commonly do prior to seeing the physician if they’re coming in for an ear complaint. This helps give the physician more information as far as how severe a problem is. We can also see if there’s something else from that pathology that needs to be addressed,” Rosen said.
The audio booth is an enclosed, soundproof room where physicians can test and evaluate the patient’s hearing. The inside contains toys, a TV screen to direct the child and play different sounds, a seat for the patient and a window for the audiologist to view the patient. The audiologist usually runs the test outside of the booth, but for children under the age of five years, they will stay inside the room to help the child follow commands. Two common tests the audiologist performs include an audiogram, which tests a patient’s ability to hear different volumes and frequencies, and a tympanogram, which measures the
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Derrill Crowe, MD
Richard Anderson, MD, CEO of The Doctors Company
Philp Rosen, MD
Healthcare Leaders Association of Alabama Holds Winter Conference
By Steve Spencer
When Lisa Beard, fresh out of college in 1994, was asked to help manage the Alabama Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) conference, she had no idea that it turn into a 30-year engagement.
“I started with Market Potential, an advertising agency in 1994. Alabama MGMA was their client,” Beard said. “We managed their conference until 1998 when the owner of Market Potential became the Marketing Director at Brookwood Hospital. The Alabama MGMA approached me to manage the association on my own at that point.”
Since then, the group has grown from around 200 members to over 700, and at the end of 2023, was re-branded as the Healthcare Leaders Association of Alabama (HLAA). The association just held their winter conference from Wednesday, March 5th through Friday the 7th at the Riverchase Galleria Hyatt Regency with nearly 200 medical practice executives in attendance, including 27 first-time attendees, along with 70 vendors manning exhibition booths.
The opening speaker was Joe Mull, whose latest book was named a top business book of the year by Publisher’s Weekly. Mull, who previously led training at one of the largest healthcare systems in the U.S., talked about building staff commitment and keeping top talent in this new age of work. That night, the entire group took buses to Top Golf for dinner and networking.
On Thursday, after breakfast, Cameron Cox, III, MHA, FACMPE, President and CEO of MSOC Health,
spoke to the group about strategies to navigate burnout, while adapting to evolving challenges. In a breakout session later that morning, Cox gave a presentation on recent healthcare transparency acts have ushered in a new era of data accessibility.
“Data transparency is a concept that started four years ago with the No Surprises Act,” Cox said. “The value for physicians and administrators is that the information is available to understand what everyone’s allowables are. This gives
Gastroenterology team.
us an opportunity to work off a position of knowledge and information when we do contract negotiations or when we’re considering joining an accountable care organization. There are numerous situations that this is applicable to.”
Other breakout speakers included Katie Tanner, PHR, a human resources professional from Gainesville, Florida; Jackie Boswell, MBA and Stephen Dickens, JD with State Volunteer Mutual Insurance in Nashville; Zack Bennett,
Tasnia Matin, MD
W elc oming Tasnia Matin, MD and J essie Co rrea, CRNP
Jessie Correa, CRNP
Lisa Beard, Executive Director of HLAA HLAA attendees at Top Golf.
Birmingham Orthopedic Surgeon Returns Home to Practice Specialized Care
By anSLey Franco
When you speak, you likely use your hands to emphasize your words. If you communicate through sign language, your hands become your primary voice. Beyond function, our hands are an intimate part of the body, deeply connected to our brains and playing a vital role in daily life. That connection drew David Woods, MD to specialize in hand and upper extremity orthopedic surgery.
A Birmingham native, Woods recently returned to his hometown after completing medical school, residency and a fellowship to join OrthoSports Associates, focusing on wrist and elbow care.
“When you grow up here, and then come back and treat so many – whether it’s family friends, people you know, people you don’t know — you learn more about the community around you, and I’ve been really grateful for that,” Woods said.
His journey to specializing in hand and upper extremity care was not always straightforward. From the age of nine, Woods admired his uncle, an ER doctor in south Alabama. He first person Woods had ever known who truly loved his job
and found excitement in his daily work. This inspired Woods to pursue a career in emergency medicine, and given Birmingham’s strong ties to medical education, it felt like a natural choice.
During his medical school rotations, Woods discovered a passion not just for surgery, but also for clinic visits and building relationships with patients. That passion for creating a medical plan with the patient was solidified during a summer in Kenya where he observed orthopedic surgeries daily.
Many patients Woods saw arrived with severe injuries from Boda Boda accidents.
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These are the bicycle and motorcycle taxis that are common in East Africa, and the people who drive them are often the primary providers for their families.
“They’re the ones that the kids rely on to get back into the workforce and to put food on the table,” Woods said. “Just to see how drastically you could change not only their outlook, but their whole family’s outlook, and restore their function, getting them back to do the things they needed to do to take care of their families, had a pretty profound influence on me.”
The ability to take someone who was completely incapacitated and restore that function is what drew Woods away from becoming an ER doctor and into orthopedics.
“What was cool about it is that orthopedics usually works more in the bone side of the body: fracture fixation, joint replacement and those kinds of things,” Woods said. “The unique side of hand surgery is that you do all those things. But on top of that, you get a lot of training on the plastic surgery side of the upper extremity as well. It made me a more versatile surgeon.”
By integrating the specialized skills
of orthopedics and plastic surgery, Woods’s approach to hand surgery allows him to treat a wide range of injuries and conditions from sports injuries to carpal tunnel and elderly degenerative upper extremity changes.
Improved technology, such as portable ultrasounds, has allowed him to perform tendon sheath injections and intraarticular injections in previously hard-to-reach places, saving time and resources while improving convenience for the patient.
“One of the biggest advances in the field has come in the area of wrist arthroplasty. The incisions are now much, much smaller than they used to be,” Woods said.
Woods emphasizes that surgery is not always the first solution he recommends for upper extremity issues. “Sometimes patients think that because you’re a surgeon, you’re automatically going to prescribe surgery,” he said. “But at our practice, we try to make it a priority that when patients see us, there are usually so many options we can offer before surgery, and there are so many nonoperative management options.”
David Woods, MD
The FDA Removes Semaglutide from the Drug Shortage List
By: JiM Hoover
The Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”) has removed semaglutide from its drug shortage list after the agency determined the current supply of the drug can meet present and future demand. On February 21, 2025, the FDA updated its drug shortage list and labeled the shortage of all doses of injectable semaglutide (Ozempic/Wegovy) as being resolved. The FDA’s announcement will affect community pharmacies, telehealth companies, and other providers managing patient care. These stakeholders should assess their current practices and effectively transition during the brief window in which the FDA will employ enforcement discretion. 503A compounding pharmacies may continue to compound semaglutide injection products until April 22, 2025. 503B outsourcing facilities may continue to compound semaglutide injection products until May 22, 2025. The FDA stated the deadlines were set “to avoid unnecessary disruption to patient treatment.”
As a primer, 503A compounding pharmacies compound drug products
pursuant to a patient-specific prescription, while 503B outsourcing facilities generally compound drug products on a larger scale without a patient-specific prescription. Among other differences from FDAapproved drug products, compounded drug products have not undergone FDA premarket review for safety, effectiveness, or quality. Further, neither 503A compounding pharmacies nor 503B outsourcing facilities may compound a product that is “essentially a copy” of a commercially available drug. “Essentially a copy” is generally defined as identical or
nearly identical to an FDA approved drug. One exception to the “essentially a copy” restriction that allows compounders to compound an essential copy of an FDA approved drug is when the FDA approved drug appears on the drug shortage list at the time of compounding, distribution, and dispensing. Thus, the placement of a drug on the drug shortage list allowed compounding pharmacies to compound semaglutide because the FDA did not consider the drug to be “commercially available” in the U.S.
Importantly, the April 22, 2025 and May 22, 2025 cut-off dates are for those compounded products that are “essentially a copy” of an FDA-approved product. The FDA’s declaratory order does not restrict compounding pharmacies or outsourcing facilities from compounding semaglutide injection products that are not essentially a copy semaglutide to meet individual patient needs. Examples of individual needs typically relate to requiring a different dose or a change in inactive ingredients due to adverse side effects such allergic reactions.
As a result of the FDA’s action, community pharmacies, telehealth
companies, and other providers with a patient population relying on compounded semaglutide injection products will need to develop a transition plan. In its declaratory order, the FDA acknowledged that patients using these compounded products may face gaps in treatment and local shortages could persist. The FDA’s reasoning for extending the enforcement discretion period was in part to enable local pharmacies the opportunity to assess inventory and adjust ordering patterns based on new patterns of patient demand. However, the window of “opportunity” the FDA describes will not remain open long. As a result, stakeholders prescribing, receiving, or dispensing compounded semaglutide injection products need to take immediate action to plan and adapt accordingly.
The removal of semaglutide from the drug shortage list also comes as public officials raise concerns about counterfeit and illegal forms of diabetes and obesity medications entering the U.S. On Feb. 19, 2025 the National Association of Attorneys General sent a letter to acting FDA commissioner Sara Brenner, MD,
Jim Hoover
Rebecca Kidd Joins Total Dermatology
Total Dermatology recently hired Rebecca Kidd as their new Marketing Director Kidd earned a Bachelor of Science in Communications from The University of Tennessee and a Master of Science in Communications from Syracuse University. She has spent the past 10 years working in marketing and
communications across industries, including law, the arts, athletics, and education.
Most recently, she served as the Director of Marketing for the UAB Arts Alliance. Before that, she was the Director of Digital Marketing and Advertising and the McCallie School in Chattanooga.
Southern Medical Association’s Annual Scientific Assembly
The Southern Medical Association's 117th Annual Scientific Assembly, being held in New Orleans November 13-15, 2025, will unite healthcare professionals across specialties in a collaborative forum addressing critical aspects of oncology care.
Earn CME Credits, ABIM MOC Points, and Nurse Contact Hours while engaging with experts. .
Session topics will include:
• Disparities in Care
• Emerging Therapeutic Strategies
• Mental Health
• Treatment Options
• Screening and Detection
• Palliation
• Survivorship
Visit sma.org/asa2025 for more information and to register. Register by April 30th and receive a 20 percent registration discount. Use code ASA2025Early at checkout.
East Alabama Medical Center Recognized in America’s Best Hospitals
East Alabama Medical Center (EAMC) has been recognized as one of America’s Best Hospitals by the Women’s Choice Award®. The hospital was honored in several categories, including Patient Experience, Patient Safety, Cancer Care, Orthopedics, and Minimally Invasive Surgery.
“East Alabama Health strives to provide quality, compassionate healthcare for all our patients, and these recognitions highlight our dedication to upholding that mission,” said Laura Grill, president and CEO of East Alabama Health.
Children’s of Alabama Welcomes New Chair of Department of Pediatrics and Physician in Chief
After a national search, Children’s of Alabama and UAB have chosen Yung Lau, MD as the new chair of the UAB Department of Pediatrics and Physician in Chief at Children’s.
Lau has served as interim chair of Pediatrics since November 1, 2024. He is also a professor and the vice chair of Clinical Affairs in the Department of Pediatrics, and serves as division director for Pediatric Cardiology.
“It is an honor to serve as chair of a department where I have been a proud faculty member for more than 30 years,” said Lau.
Lau is a nationally recognized expert in pediatric electrophysiology, including arrhythmia management with catheter ablation, pacing and device. His other research focus is congenital heart disease. He has contributed to more than 40 published manuscripts.
Lau earned his medical degree from Loma Linda University in California before conducting his internship and residency in Pediatrics at UAB. He completed a Pediatric Cardiology postdoctoral fellowship at the Medical University of South Carolina.
Infirmary Health Breaks Ground on New Facility
Infirmary Health has started construction on a new 95,000-squarefoot facility in Daphne that will serve as an ambulatory surgery center and medical office building. The two-story facility will include six operating rooms; an imaging center; linear accelerator; ultrasound facilities; and a dedicated cancer center. The two-story structure will be located on Highway 90 on a
60-acre tract that currently houses a diagnostic and medical center and a freestanding emergency room.
The building will replace operations currently conducted at Thomas Medical Center on Highway 98. "The physicians over there will be moving here or to one of our other facilities," said Mark Nix, President and CEO of Infirmary Health.
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Healthcare Leaders Association Alabama and Birmingham Chapters Award Scholarship
In August of 2022, The Alabama Chapter of Healthcare Leaders Association and the Birmingham Chapter HLA set up an Endowed Scholarship at Samford University. Scholarships are awarded each academic year to a rising senior enrolled in the bachelor’s or master’s program in the Department of Healthcare Administration and Informatics in the School of Public Health at Samford University.
This year's recipient is AnaKate Andrasko. She received her bachelor's degree from the University of Montevallo and will complete her Master of Healthcare Administration in May of this year. She has accepted a Fellowship with Whitfi eld Regional Hospital in Demopolis. AnaKate was recognized at the recent Winter Conference of the Healthcare Leaders Association of Alabama in Birmingham.
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AnaKate Andrasko with Alabama HLA President, Thalia Baker
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